The present invention relates to an image synthesizing system, an image processing apparatus, and an image processing method that can create a synthetic image such as a photo book or a collage print using users' images stored in a storage of a server providing a cloud service and that can provide the created synthetic image to users.
At present, a social networking service (SNS), an online storage service, and the like are known as cloud services in which users' images are stored in a storage of a server via a network such as the Internet.
The SNS is a community type web service intended for users to communicate with each other and has, for example, a function of allowing users to share and view (or, to publish) images, which have been uploaded to a server via a network by the users, and the like.
The online storage service is a service of lending a storage (disk space) of a server to users, where the users can upload or download images to and from the server via a network.
In the cloud service such as the SNS or the online storage service, a synthetic image such as a photo book or a collage print is created using users' images stored in the storage of the server and is provided to users.
Here, the photo book is a service of creating an image collection in which a predetermined number of images selected from the users' images are arranged in a predetermined layout in a predetermined number of pages.
The collage print is a service of creating a synthetic image in which a predetermined number of images selected from the users' images are arranged in a predetermined layout in a single print.
For example, JP 2009-265886 A, JP 2006-120076 A, JP 2004-70614 A, and JP 2004-246868 A are known as technical literatures in the art that are related to the present invention.
JP 2009-265886 A discloses an image managing apparatus for providing images to plural information processing apparatuses via a network, in which a behavior pattern to images which highly catches the fancy of a visitor is individually set for each visitor, an image of which the previous operation history of a visitor corresponds to the set behavior pattern of the visitor is retrieved from the images provided, and the retrieved image is displayed on a screen or book data including the retrieved image is individually created for each visitor.
JP 2006-120076 A discloses an image processing method of creating a photo album by adding the “extent of favorite” of a sorting person as a sorting key to each image, sorting plural images belonging to the same category, setting pages of a photo album using predetermined plural photo-album templates, and extracting and arranging photographs to be arranged in the set album on the basis of the added “extent of favorite”.
JP 2004-70614 A discloses a method of controlling an image processing server connected to plural terminals via communication lines, in which at least one image group including images received from a terminal is stored, vote information correlated with a specific image in a specific image group out of the images received from the terminal is counted and stored, and display information to be displayed on the terminal or other terminals accessible to the image processing server is created on the basis of the counting result of the vote information.
JP 2004-246868 A discloses an image extracting method of extracting a predetermined number of images out of plural images, in which a photo album is created by sequentially inputting the “extent of favorite” as a user's evaluation value on an image for the plural images, extracting a predetermined number of images out of the plural images on the basis of the input “extents of favorite”, and arranging the extracted images in each page of the photo album.
JP 2009-265886 A, JP 2006-120076 A, JP 2004-70614 A, and JP 2004-246868 A each describe that a predetermined number of images are selected from plural images on the basis of the extent of favorite and the selected images are displayed or a photo book is created using the selected images.
However, since images uploaded using a cloud service such as an SNS or an online storage service are not images which are prepared for a synthetic image such as a photo book or a collage print by users, images not suitable for a synthetic image may be mixed therein.